Return To Helgen
by ColdGoldLazarus
Summary: Small snippets from the early career of Aria Wendolyn, an innocent Imperial woman turned reluctant Dovahkiin.


The pass was cold, and windy, and Aria shivered silently as she cursed herself for her lack of foresight. The warmest article of clothing she had in her possession was the studded leather armour she had taken from a barbarian. She couldn't even remember which barbarian it was now; the events of the last several days had all blended together since…

Thankfully, another gust of wind interrupted her train of thought and brought her back to the present. The present wasn't much to cheer about either, as she futilely crossed her bare arms and continued staggering through the shifting snow. She had a set of green-hued clothes that she wore when in town; perhaps she could wear that across her shoulders like a cloak, over her armour? Perhaps it was no surprise that she had underestimated the cold. With the narrow frame and rosy skin of a southerner, she was no Nordic warrior, could barely lift a knife not two weeks ago, and she just wasn't cut out for this. Each gust felt like it was stripping away her skin to flay the flesh beneath.

Once again cursing her own stupidity, she willed herself to hold on as she put on a burst of speed, sprinting down the pass and around the corner. She hadn't counted the steps, but surely she was growing close to High Hrothgar?

It turned out that the only thing she was growing close to was a troll. It wasn't unlike the one she'd encountered much further downslope, but this one seemed much more muscular, somehow, and its rough hide was as white as the swirling blizzard around them. Aria was really very glad it was asleep.

Stepping quietly, Aria considered the invisibility potion she knew was somewhere in her pack. The way her day was going so far, it was probably at the very bottom. Aria glanced around; the troll was positioned against the right wall of the pass, and she was edging by to the left. There was a long way remaining before she was safely past, though, and she'd gone too far to go back now. Gently sinking to her knees until the snow came up to the tops of her thighs, she removed the backpack. Every motion was made extremely slowly, she careful to keep steady and avoid making too much noise.

Fortunately, the potion was fairly close to the top, concealed beneath the dragon scales she'd… obtained… yesterday at Whiterun's western tower. Once she was certain her belongings were secure, she just as carefully returned the pack to her back, and stood up. She picked the bottle up from where she'd left it laying on the ground, and uncorked it.

A loud crack echoed down the pass.

Aria threw her head back and dunked the bottle's contents into her mouth, swallowing it so quickly she nearly choked. She was already running even as she spluttered, the wind now seeming to scream and howl in her ears, but the sudden feeling of warmth in her veins told her that her blunder hadn't been in vain. She didn't even bother to check for visual confirmation of this, continuing her sprint and hoping it would be enough.

The troll was beginning to stir, its three large eyes blinking open and shut sleepily as it sniffed at the air. Aria kept running, though her endurance was low, praying to the gods – she didn't particularly care which ones – that it would not catch up to her. She ran until she would run no more, then ran a bit more for good measure. But it wasn't enough, and she collapsed into the snow, breathing heavily. The ice troll sniffed at the air, head turning slowly in her direction.

Struggling to her feet, the southerner trudged onward, frantic eyes darting unseen between the troll and the path ahead. It loped forward a few paces and sniffed again. Aria was grateful for the wind's howling now, as it covered the crunching noises made whenever her boots broke through the crust of snow.

Finally, the troll gave up, the swirling snowflakes confusing the trail, and after pounding its fists against the ground in frustration, it began to wander back over to its sleeping spot. Aria let out a sigh of relief, and then upon realizing she was beginning to fade back into view, she dashed around the corner. There had been another one of those etched tablets back there, but she had no intention of risking herself for it; she could probably make an educated guess based on whatever the next few said.

* * *

Arriving, rather winded, at the entrance to High Hrothgar, Aria let out a sigh and sat down on the first step leading to the left door. There was a pile of various gifts and donations sitting around a large chest between the two staircases, and the southerner opened it to dutifully deposit the bundle of supplies she'd agreed to carry for the older man Klimmek. She wondered if he'd be able to make the climb next time… to say nothing of that ice troll. Perhaps it had been a good thing that he had sent her in his stead this time. Getting up and futilely wiping snow off her armour, Aria set up the steps and entered the temple.

Inside, it was rather dim, a stark contrast from the painful whiteness outside. A torch was set into the wall nearby, and she leaned up against the wall below it to warm up, willing the frost to melt as quickly as possible. Her head began to swim from exhaustion, and she lost track of time.

"Dragonborn?"

Aria's head shot up and she leapt away from the brazier in shock. She didn't know how long she'd napped – it could have been only seconds, or a few hours for all she knew, but either way, she was no longer alone. An aging and wrinkled man stood before her, dressed in a dark robe and hood, and looking at her with befuddlement. "Are you the Dragonborn?" He asked again, and she noticed the grey beard that gave his group their name, hanging braided from his chin.

 _As the corpse began to crackle and burn from within, some sort of energy began to flow out through the ever-growing gaps, first swirling aimlessly in the air, then turning to stream toward Aria. The southerner threw up an arm to shield herself, fearing this was some final attack from the dragon, but instead of the burning or shock she had expected, the energy flowed into her, and she felt… stronger. A single word echoed through her head, from a tongue she did not know –_ Fus. _She straightened up, arms lowering as she stared at the dragon's skeleton in nothing less than abject bewilderment._

"I… I guess so, yeah." She looked down at the ground as the Greybeard took on a strange expression. "Though I have a name."

" _I'm really glad you're on our side, Dragonborn." One of the guards said, leaning over to examine one of the wing-bones the dragon had left behind._

" _But I'm not…! I'm… I'm just Aria." Aria insisted, still struggling to understand what had just happened. Nobody listened._

"I am Arngeir. I see that you have answered our summons." He beckoned her to follow him, and he led her to a wide room with several doors leading elsewhere in the keep. There were some stairs leading to a balcony in the back, but the main space, illuminated in a cold white by a single skylight, was level and bare aside from a few clay pots. "Now, what is your name?"

Standing straighter, Aria let some pride enter her tone, along with gratefulness that he had actually listened, unlike virtually everyone else in Whiterun. "I am Aria Wendolyn. I hail from Cyrodill. It is… an honor to speak with you." She gave a slight bow of respect, trying not to think about her initial reaction to the Greybeards.

" _Whatever happened when you killed that dragon, it revealed something in you, and the Greybeards heard it. If they think you're Dragonborn, who are we to argue? You'd better get up to High Hrothgar immediately. There's no refusing the summons of the Greybeards. It's a tremendous honor."_

" _So I go up to the tallest mountain to learn the secret ancient magic from the hermit monks. Wow." After the initial shock had subsided, Aria had turned to savage sarcasm – another way to deal with the situation without accepting it yet. The Jarl just gave a tolerant chuckle before dropping another bombshell – she was now Thane of Whiterun, whatever that meant._

"Indeed so…" Arngeir gave a noncommittal murmur as he looked the visitor up and down. When he and his brothers had heard the Shouts in the valley below, the monk had assumed that he would summon some burly warrior with a square jaw, eyes like ice, and an imposing figure both in terms of height and width, with a perpetual grimace and a powerful blade – a Nordic warrior through and through. But now, the woman he looked at was the very antithesis of his expectations that he was honestly not sure how to feel about this.

She was tall but willowy, and almost painfully skinny, with bony, knobbly elbows and arms like twigs. Her skin, returning to normal tones after the dangerous blue shades inflicted by the screaming blizzard outside, was rather pale, but still possessed a sun-kissed rosiness and light freckling. Her nose was narrow and long, almost beak-like, and her soft cheeks rounded down to a narrow, delicate chin. Her vibrant red hair, though somewhat singed at the tips from her experience yesterday, was long and straight, stopping just above her knees; one eye was half-hidden by a stray lock to give her something of a shy look. She wore a frown, sure, but it was a nervous, awkward look that made him think of a startled rabbit more than a gruff warrior. He supposed she could be considered modestly beautiful, marred only by two faint scars across the bridge of her nose - clearly very old and still only barely noticeable. Her green eyes spoke of sun-drenched meadows, even through her somewhat tired, sunken sockets. The past few days had begun to change her, clearly, but she was still very much a soft Imperial, completely unsuited to the hard life and conditions in Skyrim.

The only thing that did match with his expectations was her weapon, a massive and ragged piece of darkened metal carved with ancient Nordic ruins and encrusted with blood that had dried thousands of years ago. It was so long that even slung over her back, the tip dragged across the floor when she walked – with her scrawny arms, it was a miracle she could even lift the damn thing. Yet in a way, this one item seemed to emphasize everything else about her that defied all common sense.

This was their dragonborn.

Well, at least she was polite. Arngeir bowed in return and began to talk to her about the Way of the Voice, and she listened.

* * *

Three more days had passed, and Aria had slain her second dragon. It had been just last night, as the one from Helgen had only just resurrected it. The battle was harder in some ways than the first, easier in others. Her companion for this fight, Delphine, had held her own respectably well; she could believe the woman was part of a secret order of dragonslayers.

As she climbed down the slopes of High Hrothgar again, her tired eyes strained by the bright light of day that was mercifully beginning to recede, she wandered her own thoughts in the way only the spectacularly stressed and sleep-deprived could. Every so often she would nod off, only to be instantly jolted awake by her stumbling steps.

Dragonslayers, huh? Yeah, she could believe Delphine was one, the way she'd handled herself in that fight; saved Aria just as much as Aria had saved her, completely unlike the guards at Whiterun. She'd tried to help as many as she could, but even when she forced her craven instincts aside to leap out and slash at the drake, she couldn't stop the men from burning to cinders before her eyes. Just like in Helgen. It had been a long, exhausting battle, and the revelation of her own draconic nature only made things worse.

Look at her, with her two huge swords and fresh battle scars. Who was she? She wasn't the woman who had come to Skyrim to learn of song and magic. Now she had her fill of magic, and was sick of it. Now the only songs she sung were the rhythmic grunts and screams of fighting. Who was this woman claiming to be Aria Wendolyn? Or perhaps it was the other way around – maybe this was who Aria had been all along, and it had been nothing but oblivious pretentiousness that made her choose the standing stone of the mage path. Maybe there was more of the Nord barbarian in her than she had thought, or wanted to realize. What a stupid hypocrite.

But she was getting good at fighting. Alarmingly good. Perhaps not as good as Delphine, but rather close. Delphine was a good fighter, alright. A good hunter. A good slayer.

Aria wondered if there were any good dragons. She was supposedly part-dragon, yet she still liked to think she was good. She was good, right? Even after stealing from the dead, even after her brutal murder of the helpless men under that one necromancer's thrall? She was a good person, right? Just like there had to be at least one good dragon out there.

No, that would just be too easy, likely.

Aria was brought back to reality by a loud grunting noise, and realized suddenly that she was just around the corner from the pass with the Ice Troll. It hadn't been there when she'd passed through to return to High Hrothgar, but several hours had passed since then; perhaps it had returned for some reason?

Adrenaline pushed away the fog of exhaustion and set her leaden limbs to moving again. Instead of taking the path, she clambered up the rocky slope to her left, until she was overlooking the etched tablet and the pass. She dug around in her bag for healing potions as she surveyed the scene; the troll was indeed down there, loping back and forth and growling to itself. It could hear her, she instinctively felt, and it wasn't long before it spotted her as well.

Aria brandished her sword and charged down the slope, slashing wildly at the apelike creature before retreating. She felt the etched tablet at her back now, and the troll was getting closer…

" **Fus Roh-Dah!"** She Shouted, and the troll was sent flying by the force of her blast. Hitting the icy wall and sliding weakly down, the Troll lay stunned for several moments before beginning to clamber to its feet, by which time Aria was upon it, hacking at the beast with her blade.

But it was of little use; as soon as it was standing again, the troll let loose a pair of savage swipes; the first ripping deeply into her right arm and then another pummeling her stomach – the studded armour protected her from the claws, but the force alone was enough to leave her winded. Her preparation had paid off, however, as she uncorked a health potion and downed it, spluttering and choking as it went down.

The troll was now between Aria and the standing tablet, and so she took this opportunity to retreat down the pass, downing several more potions along the way. The troll was catching up, swinging on its fists to outmatch her unsteady pace. She parried the first blow, but the second sent her crashing into the wall and spiraling down into the powdery snow.

" **Fus Roh-Dah!"** she let loose again, blowing the Troll back by several meters. This time, she didn't bother attacking, taking advantage of its downed state to create as much distance between them as possible. Finally exiting the pass, she glanced down the staircase ahead to the left. Should she let the troll chase her all the way down the slopes to Ivarstead? Even her stronger blows hadn't seemed to do much to it, and she doubted the guards there would be able to assist much. She had to find some other way.

Looking to the right, she found a steep slope leading down to a cliff top, beyond which was snow swirling in darkness. There were a few boulders poking up out of the snow here and there, and Aria gave an uncharacteristically savage grin. Perfect.

She ran along the slope, slipping despite herself dangerously close to the cliff edge. She pushed with all her might, though, forcing those long legs of hers to carry her back up until she could duck behind a boulder and cling to it to stay steady. It didn't take long for her pursuer to arrive, snuffling and snorting loudly. Her heart pounded, her lungs struggled for air, and her head was aching with sleep loss, but she was as ready as she would ever be. The troll rounded the boulder and charged up the slope towards her with surprising speed, a claw raised to strike.

" **FUS ROH-DAH!"** she screamed, the gale force pushing her back and striking the beast with the intensity of a hurricane. It scrambled desperately for a solid hold, but before either of them realized it, it was over the cliff edge, seeming to hover for a brief split second over the void. Then it was gone, and a loud thud and a wet crack echoed through the mountains. Aria stood, still clinging to the boulder, with a dumb expression of fear still written across her face.

Several moments of silence passed before she could remove her death-grip on the rocks, and allowed herself to slide gently down to come to a halt at the edge of the cliff. Peering downwards, she could see a lump of light grey against the dull moon-bathed white far below. It didn't seem to be moving, but Aria couldn't take any chances. Gripping the edge with both hands, she swung first one leg, then the other, over the cliff until she was hanging almost vertical, her face pressed up against the slick icy wall. Screwing her face up in preparation for pain, she let go, falling several feet before the gentle outward curve caught her and turned the drop into a very swift slide. She landed on a narrow ledge and promptly fell over onto the Troll's thick form. She just let herself lay there for a moment, nuzzling the warm fur, before her instincts kicked back in.

Standing up and brushing snow off her uncomfortably blue-tinged arms, she hesitantly began checking out the troll's limp form, affirming to herself that it really _was_ dead. Relief washed over her like an avalanche – in a way, that beast had been more frightening to her than either of the dragons she'd faced; at least with them, there had been a strange sense of… kinship? Familiarity? That had made her push aside her fears more easily. With the Troll, though, there was nothing but blind animalistic rage, and a sense that it would not stop hunting her, even if she traveled to the ends of Skyrim and beyond. She was truly glad to be rid of it.

Look at her. She had conquered two dragons and an Ice Troll, and it was the Troll that had scared her more. Maybe, just maybe, there was something to all of this Dragonborn nonsense after all. Sure she was still the same soft Imperial she had always been, but in that moment, she felt she had all the bravery of a Nord, and the fiery spirit of a dragon. A long, loud, hysterical laugh rang through the gorge, echoing off the mountain faces. Aria fell to her knees, shaking with uncontrollable laughter. She was alive!

Eventually, sobriety returned, and suddenly the fearless warrior was once more a frightened, twitchy-eyed Imperial barely bigger than her swords. And she was stuck on a ledge with the utterly useless corpse of an ice troll.

Well, there was nowhere to go but down, now. Aria slipped and stumbled her way down the rest of the slope, earning several bruises for her troubles. Snow and ice became bare rock and dirt became green grass and shrubs, and she found herself deposited on a disused cobblestone road. Up ahead to her right were some shadowy figures, and with no small degree of caution, the tall redhead approached them.

They were Stormcloaks, two of them. The woman was telling the man about how she had come to join the rebels, but both broke off when they heard the intruder. Aria held up her hands as she strode down the path, showing her lack of hostility, but the two continued to give her suspicious glares. "Who are you with?" The man demanded. "And if you aren't with anyone, you'd best be joining Ulfric Stormcloak in Windhelm."

Aria had followed Ralov through the dank passages below Helgen Keep, but she hadn't really chosen sides in this Civil War yet. He had insisted she go to Windhelm as well, but she wanted to put it off as much as possible. At the moment, she could only say she was on her own side, or maybe that of Whiterun. "Okay," she lied. "I'll travel there as quickly as possible." That seemed to satiate the soldiers, and they allowed her to pass.

It wasn't until another half-hour had passed that she began to realize that she had no clue where the path was heading. She'd lost her map sometime during the fight with the second dragon, too, so she couldn't check that. Frowning, she began looking along the side of the road for a sign of some sort.

It took a further quarter-hour for her to finally find her quarry. There were three boards tacked to a wooden pole; the top one was bigger and older looking than the other two; it pointed back the way she came. The lettering was too faded for her to make out what it said, though. The next one down pointed out that Iverstead was also back the way she'd just come, and she sighed. The last one pointed the way she was going, and said Helgen.

 _The sign said Helgen. She'd never heard the name before, but she could guess it was the first town inside Skyrim's borders. Shrugging with a cheerful sort of indifference, the woman nodded to herself and continued on down the road. She wore a simple tunic and traveling cloak, and her green eyes shone innocently from a pure face. She was ready to begin her life of learning, and felt nothing could go wrong._

Aria looked at the sign, then down the road, then back at the sign. Now that her adrenaline rush had worn off, she felt more exhausted than ever, and somehow the sight of that name had made her limbs twice as leaden. She didn't want to do this, but some part of her urged herself on, felt that she _needed_ to go down that road and face whatever she found at the end. She was faced with a choice now – keep going, or turn around and flee to Iverstead with her metaphorical tail between her legs.

Instead, she chose to set up camp, erecting a tent right behind the sign. She needed sleep; perhaps morning would bring her the answer she needed.

* * *

It was evening, the sun setting over the peaks at the far end of the valley as Aria tromped down the many steps of Whiterun and out the main gates. Not far behind, another warrior followed her, albeit reluctantly. This woman, tall and wide and bearing the muscular stature of a Nord, was clad in heavy steel armour and carried a shortsword on her hip. Her black hair was shorn just above her shoulders, and she sported a few braids among the raven locks. Her name was Lydia, and she was rather obviously less than pleased with the situation.

Aria followed the stream through a tunnel to cut down on her travel time; the moment she was clear of the walls of Whiterun, she made a beeline for the Western Watchtower, ignoring the roads out of childish spite. She was angry now, though she couldn't really say why after all the honors that had been bestowed upon her. And she was still alive, so that had to be something, right?

One of those honors was still trailing behind, sighing in her own frustration as the new Thane pointedly stepped off the path to get to the watchtower as soon as possible. Lydia looked at the clean cobblestones, then at the grassy plains, then with a sigh she followed Aria.

It didn't take them long to arrive at the ruined guard post. Some fires still raged, but the other guards had left, taking the corpses back to Whiterun for identification and burial. It was just the two of them and the dragon skeleton. "So you're probably wondering what we're doing back out here?" Aria asked, sitting down on a rock and burying her face in her hands.

The housecarl, choosing to stay standing, shrugged noncommittally. "I'm sure you have your reasons. It is not my place to ask."

Aria made a vaguely disappointed noise. "But you're at least curious, right? I mean, I apparently just slayed a dragon, and you aren't even remotely impressed?" She frowned to herself, though Lydia didn't see it. "I guess what I'm trying to say is…"

Lydia just fixed her with a level stare. "I don't see how impressing me is even remotely relevant. I am sworn to serve and carry your burdens, not to fawn over your feats." The Nord woman crossed her arms over her chest and she looked over at the huge dragon skull sitting in the grass a few meters away.

"I don't want you to fawn… I just…" Aria sighed. "I don't know." The two sat in silence for several long moments, the only sound being the crackling of a nearby fire. Finally, Aria spoke up again. "You are my housecarl, right? So you must do whatever I order you to?"

"There are a few limitations – you cannot order me to debauch myself or turn against Whiterun, but otherwise… otherwise, I am sworn to follow you, my Thane." She managed to make the title sound like an insult, somehow.

"Then Housecarl Lydia…" Aria began, hesitating only a moment before pressing onwards. "I order you to be honest. Tell me not what you think I want to hear, nor what is polite or expected of your station. Right now, I order you to tell me how you honestly feel about me. Do not hold back, do not leave anything out."

Lydia sat in silence, her face hidden in shadow even as her dark hair was lit in shades of red and orange by the nearby blazes. Just when Aria was about to repeat her order, the housecarl began to speak. "What do I honestly think of you?" She said, tone bitter. "I think you're a waste.

"I saw the dragon go up in flame this afternoon, and I heard the Shout not long after. I didn't see you then. The Jarl wanted to wait to hear back from Irileth, but he had a feeling that a new Dragonborn had arrived, and the Greybeard's summons only confirmed this. I was told that I was to be appointed Housecarl to this Dragonborn if they showed themselves, and I couldn't have felt more honored." Aria was leaning forward despite herself, despite knowing what was coming next. "Then I met you, and… I couldn't even believe it at first. You weren't what I was expecting, not even close."

Lydia stood up, staring out at the stars that were beginning to appear in the darkened skies. "Look at you, not even properly Nord. Oh, you're attractive, I'll give you that, but you shouldn't be the Dragonborn." She abruptly spun around, fire in her eyes and her volume steadily rising. "You stupid, weakling, soft woman. You were probably spoiled rotten down in Cyrodill, you damn imperialist _coward!_ " She stalked over until her face was less than a centimeter from Aria's pointed nose. Her next words were not shouted, but rather uttered in a dangerously quiet hiss. "Skyrim deserves better than you. _I_ deserve better. Why the hell did you even come here, anyway?"

The housecarl straightened back up, face set in a scowl. "That is how I truly feel about you, Dragonborn. I hope this service is satisfactory."

The redhead stared up at her for several moments, expression completely unreadable. Then she began, slowly and carefully enunciating each word, visibly restraining her own anger. "Well, if it makes you feel any better, I'm not exactly pleased with this stupid shit either. Do you think I wanted to be some grand warrior? I went to Bleak Falls Barrow, sure, but that's because I was ordered by the Jarl. I thought that would be the end of it, until this damn dragon attacked!" She strode over and gave the skull a vicious kick – it was she who felt more pain. "I have better things to do!"

She turned to Lydia, poking a finger sharply against the Nord's chestplate. "You asked why I came to Skyrim? I did it to learn. I wanted to become a Bard, and perhaps learn some healing magic on the side. I wanted to get away from the endless shallow personal politics and economic divide down there, and I guess I thought Skyrim would be better somehow. So maybe you are right about me being stupid, in that regard, since I took it upon myself to travel to what may as well be the deepest level of Oblivion!"

Lydia's scowl deepened at this slight to her home, but Aria wasn't finished. The southerner's green eyes flashed in the darkness, but her tone was soft, tired, and she turned away with head bowed. "I'm from the empire, yes, but that doesn't make me an Imperial. I really don't care who wins; the empire, the stormcloaks… why not the damn dragons, even? Doesn't matter, cause I'm apparently some powerful Dragonborn with a grand, world-shattering destiny. So much for what I wanted in life…" She turned back toward Lydia, but the earlier rage had given way to exhaustion. "I wasn't spoiled in Cyrodill. I was a barmaid, had to get by with little to no coin. Is it really too much to ask for some degree of happiness?"

Some part of Lydia's heart went out to the woman, but she wouldn't let it show. "Perhaps it is. I don't want you to be the Dragonborn, and you don't want you to be the Dragonborn either, but unfortunately… you're the Dragonborn. My mother had a saying – 'shut your mouth and deal with it.' It seems that's what we'll have to do. No use dwelling on what could have been… my Thane."

The redhead cocked her head to one side, frowning at Lydia as though only now looking at her properly. Then she thrust an arm forward, hand open to shake. "I know you don't like me, but I am truly honored to have you as my Housecarl."

Lydia gave a stiff nod in response. "Well, are we done sitting out here? I'm fine, but I imagine the night chill will not be good for you."

Aria began striding back toward Whiterun, Lydia following dutifully behind. "You're probably right. I will take a room at the inn again; I guess you can return to Dragonsreach." She made a face at the seeming inescapable presence of the great Wyrms. "I'm low on coin at the moment, but I'll see about purchasing a home in the city at some point, since it looks like I'm here to stay. Maybe Breezehome… But tomorrow, I will be going up to High Hrothgar."

Lydia simply nodded. "I will have to ask the Jarl, but I believe the Greybeards are a rather exclusive group. I do not know if I will be permitted entry."

"Better not to risk them blowing you off the mountain or something to that effect; I will go it alone. I don't imagine you're too terribly upset about that."

Lydia gave a noncommittal shrug. "I am sworn to be your sword and shield, but if you believe I would be better to wait here, it is not my place to say." Aria looked at her housecarl, heard how she was struggling to remain tactful, and decided then and there that one of her many tasks would be to do everything to win the other woman over – she didn't know why, but she wanted the gruff Nord to truly respect and like her, even as she recognized the enormity of the task. Perhaps the first step in that process would be to put some distance between them, and allow Aria to become someone more respectable to begin with.

Tomorrow, she would climb the mountain.

* * *

The next morning found Aria, awake and refreshed, (and surprisingly not having been mauled by wolves during the night) walking to Helgen. She still couldn't tell what it was that possessed her to return to that forsaken place, but she felt somehow that she _needed_ to see it again. If she turned and ran to Iverstead like the coward Lydia believed her to be, she would likely never be able to bring herself here again.

And so it was that she slogged through the muddy cobblestones as rain poured down from the thick black clouds overhead – though the sun had supposedly risen, she could barely tell the difference from the previous night. Eventually the path turned rightward, meeting with another right in front of the gates to Helgen, and this was where Aria paused. The other path led to Cyrodill, she know, and for the briefest fraction of a second, she could see herself sprinting back through the pass, leaving all of this behind and forgetting she was ever the Dragonborn.

"Damn coward." She muttered to herself. She turned to the gates and pushed them open, doing her best to ignore the burnt skulls that had been impaled on a pike to the left. Inside the walls, Helgen was nothing less than a complete disaster. The fires had long gone out, but the buildings were in ruins. The blood-soaked ground was covered in a fine layer of ash that puffed up around Aria with every step she took, and she could spot a few corpses, unrecognizable masses of red and black, laying around as though tossed there by a careless child. Aria went right first, passing through another gate to the front of the keep.

 _She stood before the keep, frantically looking from one door to the other. Several imperial soldiers were streaming into the leftward one, while Ralof stood before the right one. Aria didn't care about this civil war nonsense of theirs; she just wanted to get away from the dragon. The rightward door happened to be closer, and so that was the one she chose, rushing through as a burst of flame landed where she'd just been standing._

The redhead was brought back to the present as a sudden feeling of intense cold washed through her. Turning around as best she could with her movements suddenly impeded by a thin sheet of ice, she saw some woman in furs standing behind her with a stream of white energy flowing from one hand. Aria growled and rushed forward, grabbing her sword and beheading the woman in a single motion. Blood spurted from the wound to add to the already thick collection on the ground, but Aria paid it little heed as she furiously searched the woman's pockets for anything of use.

Returning to the front area yielded two more bandits, who died just as quickly. Aria barely noticed her own wounds, a sudden fury having overtaken her. She saw only the dragon – not the one at the watchtower, nor the one she'd faced at the burial mound, but the dark one that had started it all, the one that had ended her life and begun it all at once, when it first set down upon Helgen's central tower. She slashed wildly, the weight of the sword putting her off-balance more than once, but she cared little. Black scales gave way easily beneath the force of her blows, no matter that the dragon's death cries sounded like the screaming of men. Her blood was boiling, rage blotting out all thought.

Finally, Aria came back to herself atop the northwest tower, the one Ulfric and his men had escaped from. Lying dead before her was an archer, his bow snapped in half and his stomach slashed clean through. Aria felt bile rising in her throat, and rushed to the edge of the tower to be sick.

Once it was all gone, she turned to the grim task of searching her victim. He wore a blue-green hood, and she took it simply because she liked the color. Aside from that, there were only some gold pieces and a quiver of iron arrows. On one side of the tower was a chest, which she found was full of coins – far more than she'd obtained from the whole group of bandits combined. Shoving them into her bag, she distantly wondered if it would be enough to buy Breezehome as she'd been considering.

It was on some level frightening how casually she'd come to treat death in this past week. The woman she'd been last time she'd come to this town would have been horrified to see what she was to become, and indeed some part of her was still there, still horrified. _Then again,_ Aria thought to herself, _that woman had never met a dragon._ No, what was truly unsettling was how little the rest of her seemed to care.

She strode down the steps and walked out into the courtyard. _A faint breeze played with Aria's vibrant locks as she made her way to the inn, intent on purchasing a room before she began shopping for other supplies. She was in Skyrim now, but she had a fair way to go yet. The sun was shining overhead, though, and she couldn't help but feel optimistic today. Crossing the border had given her an odd sense of freedom, like she was finally leaving Cyrodill behind, not only physically, but in spirit. A new life awaited her, she could just feel it._

 _Perhaps what happened next was an early omen. The trundling of wagon wheels met her ears just as she reached the Inn's front entrance, and she turned to see two carts, each bearing dozens of men, come to a halt near the far end of the courtyard. At the same time, a man bearing a black facemask and a massive axe emerged from the central tower, dragging some sort of wooden block behind him._

 _Aria noticed all the men on the carts were bound, and as a man ushered his child back into their home, she realized with dawning horror what was about to occur. One man tried to run; the imperial captain ordered the archers to shoot him. He collapsed not even a meter in front of Aria, and she turned away._

 _It was because she refused to witness the impending execution that she saw the dragon before anyone else, though it barely registered at the time. It wasn't until later, when she was jumping from a hole in the tower to land in the burning Inn that she began to comprehend what was happening – there was a_ dragon, _a real, live_ dragon _attacking._

Aria stopped before the headsman's block, and found with a morbid curiosity that the single man who had been executed before the dragon's arrival was still there, his charred skull sitting almost casually at the bottom of the wooden box. The redhead turned away, though out of shame this time. She didn't even know the man's name, but she felt a strange sort of guilt that she had not done him the honor of bearing witness to his death. "I suppose you're lucky, in a way." She murmured. "You didn't have to see what happened next."

With a heavy heart, she left through the northern gate, giving a single backward glance at the walls before following the road to Riverwood. Perhaps she had been expecting some sort of closure from this, or perhaps it had been mere curiosity pushing her to see what had become of the town she visited in her nightmares, but in a way it seemed to have made her feel worse. There was only ruin there, she decided. Ruin and pain.

Some time later, she was growing near to Riverwood, the distant massive arches of Bleak Falls Barrow just barely visible through the heavy downpour. She was taking a switchback, shivering slightly as the wet and cold began seeping into her very bones, when she came across three dark shapes. She knew what these were.

The standing stone in the far back seemed to hum with energy as she approached it. Etched upon its surface was a depiction of a robed mage casting some spell. She touched the carving, and the humming stopped.

" _My mother had a saying – 'shut your mouth and deal with it.' It seems that's what we'll have to do. No use dwelling on what could have been… my Thane."_ Lydia's voice echoed in the imperial's memory, and with that in mind, Aria turned to the rightward stone, which depicted an armour-clad warrior. She hesitated just a moment, then touched the carving. Magical energy filled the air, a constellation glowing against the carving, and a sphere of light filled the notched hole in the top of the stone before flowing into her. Now it was the warrior stone that gently hummed.

Aria turned to resume her journey to Riverwood, feeling both a profound sense of loss and a faint feeling that perhaps some good had come of this, after all. What was done was done; it was time to let go of the past. She still didn't want to be Dragonborn, still thought her appointment as Thane was ridiculous at best, but for now, she would simply shut her mouth and deal with it.

Skyrim would have its Dragonborn, at least until she was no longer needed.

* * *

 **Note:** So, I'm not completely happy with this piece, but I'll put it up for now and see what people think.

The story behind the story goes as such; I was visiting a friend's house recently, and ended up starting a new game on their copy of Skyrim. (I want to get this game for myself, eventually, but I'd need a better computer than I currently have to run it.) Sneaking past the ice troll? Happened, though I spruced it up a bit in the story. The conversation with the Greybeards? Obviously didn't; I just wanted a good way to give Aria a proper introduction. The fight with the Ice Troll? Exactly as it occurred, down to meeting the two random Stormcloaks on the path at the base of the mountain. The conversation with Lydia was also my own, though I did take out to see the dragon skeleton in-game, curious if she had any dialogue for that. (Sadly there wasn't.) The return to Helgen also occurred after the Ice Troll fight, though I encountered the mage bandit after the first two guys. I also fairly obviously rewrote the game's beginning to be more in line with the backstory I've created for Aria. And the bit with the standing stones did really happen as well; (though I actually switched from Mage to Fighter before the encounter with the second dragon) the way I ended up as a fighter despite planning to be a mage-type character has probably had the most impact on my vision of Aria's personality.

Why did I write things like this? Well, I felt that plenty of people have novelized Skyrim with their own characters and done a better job than I could, and as it is, I have enough on my plate without adding another epic. So instead I settled on writing a quirky oneshot about my rather unique encounters with that stupidly powerful Ice Troll, (which really did kill me more times than both of the dragons combined) that somehow became a very depressing oneshot about a slightly cowardly Dragonborn trying to come to grips with the role forced on her.

If I ever continue that game (though it's unlikely because the friend lives about two-hundred miles away) I may write more about Aria Wendolyn (and her developing relationship with Lydia?) but for now, I hope people like this little bit.

Be sure to leave a review, and have a nice day!


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